• Rick Santorum leads rivals in Twitter, Facebook buzz, new analysis shows

    Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time today trying to capitalize on Rick Santorum's performance in Wednesday's debate. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.

    By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com

    Rick Santorum is coming under much closer — and more skeptical — scrutiny since he jumped to the top of Republican presidential polls this month, according to a computer-assisted analysis of social media data.

    For the first time, politically engaged users of Twitter and Facebook are buzzing about Santorum more than about any other Republican candidate.

    M. Alex Johnson

    M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

    Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, swept Republican voting in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado on Feb. 7. Although all three contests were essentially beauty contests, with little official impact on the delegate count, Santorum's victories revived his campaign.

    Before Feb. 7, Santorum was generally running third behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia in most major national polls. Following those contests, he soared to the top of the major national polls, and he has remained there since.

    Santorum's rise has been mirrored on social media, according to msnbc.com's analysis of nearly 2.2 million posts on Twitter and Facebook this month. And as the spotlight has focused on him, it has drawn opponents of his sharp-edged positions out of the shadows.  

    msnbc.com research/M. Alex Johnson; Crimson Hexagon Inc.

    Click the image for the full-size chart.

    Comparison of total numbers of opinions expressed about the Republican candidates the week before the Feb. 7 contests and this week. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is represented by the purple line. Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is represented by the orange line.

    The analysis examined posts through Thursday about the four remaining major Republican candidates, filtering out straight news reports and neutral posts, such as tweets noting that a candidate would be making a campaign appearance. The resulting sample was 1.2 million tweets and Facebook posts that expressed clear support for or opposition to one of them.

    In the week leading up to the Feb. 7 contests, those Facebook and Twitter users preferred to talk about Romney by a ratio of more than 6 to 1 over Santorum. 

    Beginning Feb. 8, however, Santorum has been the No. 1 topic of conversation. This week, more than two-fifths of every post expressing an opinion — 41 percent — were about Santorum, compared to 32 percent for Romney, 15 percent for Gingrich and 12 percent for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.

    Follow the campaign on NBCPolitics.com

    (The analysis uses a tool called ForSight, a data platform developed by Crimson Hexagon Inc., which is used by many media and research organizations to gauge public opinion in new media, among them the Pew Research Center and ESPN. The results aren't a scientific reflection of national opinion. Instead, they're a broad look at what is being said by Americans who follow politics and are active on Facebook, Twitter or both.) 

    Nonpartisan research indicates that Republicans and Democrats use social networking sites in roughly equal proportions. The demographics have gradually been trending older and more conservative as the sites are adopted by a larger proportion of the American public, studies indicate.

    Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project: Social Media and the 2010 Election (.pdf)

    The msnbc.com analysis suggests that while people are much more enthusiastic about talking about Santorum, they're not any more enthusiastic about the man himself. On Feb. 7, before results of the three contests were known, 42 percent of Santorum's comments were positive to 58 percent negative; Thursday, after a debate Wednesday night in Mesa, Ariz., where Santorum came under sustained attack from Romney and Paul, the breakdown was 38 percent to 62 percent.

    Consistently, the largest driver of sentiment about Santorum is his strong stance against same-sex marriage, making up 18 percent of all opinions expressed about him and 28 percent of all negative sentiment this week — proportions that have remained remarkably consistent since June, when msnbc.com began collecting data.

    In a Facebook post typical of the anti-Santorum commentary, Jay A. Small of Vancouver, Wash., wrote this week:

    From Rick Santorum's website: "Marriage is, and has always been through human history, a union of a man and woman – and for a reason. These unions are special because they are the ones we all depend on to make new life and to connect those new lives to their mom and dad." 

    So, Mr. Santorum, your religion's typical intolerance must then also stand for banning marriage between couples who do not choose, or are not able to procreate.

    First Read: Santorum hits on religious tones in speech

    But other issues are now emerging around which significant opposition is crystallizing. The sentiment that Santorum is "too conservative," particularly in the prominence of his religious views — previously just one of several scattered notions — has broken into double digits this month, rising to 13 percent of all commentary and 20 percent of all negative opinion, such as this tweet by an Alaskan woman who describes herself as a Christian "pro-life supporter":

    Twitter.com

    The picture is different for Romney, who (at least according to msnbc.com's analysis) has yet to give voters a clear reason to vote for or against him. That suggests his supporters could be swayed by other candidates — or that he still could galvanize support with clearly articulated positions.

    'Most electable'?
    In fact, the No. 1 reason social media commentators give for supporting Romney — both this week and going all the way back to June — is their belief that he is the "most electable" Republican in the race, a sentiment that has driven 36 percent of all positive opinions this week:

    Twitter.com

    A quarter cite Romney's competence or leadership; no other issue even makes it into double digits.

    Likewise, opposition to Romney is widely scattered. A quarter of those expressing negative opinions this week cited his wealth, with many suggesting that he is out of touch with the majority of Americans, as in this tweet from Michaele Swiderski, a Tennessee woman who describes herself as a Jesus-loving conservative:

    Twitter.com

    But 15 percent also expressed concern over his Mormon faith, another 15 percent thought he was too closely tied to corporate interests, and 14 percent pinned the RINO label on him — that is, "Republican In Name Only," or not truly conservative.

    Even in Michigan — his native state, which holds an important primary Tuesday — the single most mentioned word in social media posts about Romney this week (after his own name) isn't any political issue or position.

    It's "Santorum."

    More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

  • Super PAC supporting Ron Paul is operated by a 9/11 'truther'

    Gary Franchi, right, has warned of a 9/11 cover-up, FEMA concentration camps and the New World Order. He leads a Super PAC using unlimited campaign contributions to support Ron Paul, left, in the Republican presidential race.

    By Bill Dedman
    Investigative Reporter, NBC News

    As libertarian Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul looks for a state he can win, some of his supporters have turned to a new theme: voting fraud.

    A Super PAC supporting Paul has pledged to monitor the vote in all the remaining states, using an army of exit pollsters to fight what it calls results that are "outrageous, unacceptable and patently un-American." The group, called Revolution PAC, has spent half a million dollars supporting Paul with videos, webcasts, online ads, direct mail, billboards and radio ads in primary and caucus states.

    We first noticed Revolution PAC last week, when it told the Federal Election Commission that it couldn't meet the deadline to identify its donors, because of an error by its bank. Now Revolution PAC has filed its report.

    As with many other so-called "independent" Super PACs, which can receive unlimited donations outside the normal rules of campaign finance, the pro-Paul group is operated by people with close ties to the candidate. The group's advisory board members include Penny Langford Freeman, Paul's political director from 1998 to 2007, and Joe Becker, chief legal counsel for Ron Paul 2008.

    The leader of the group, its founder, chairman and treasurer, is Gary Franchi, a promoter of conspiracy theories and sophisticated social-media entrepreneur in the resurgent movement known as the Patriots.

    The 34-year-old political activist from the Chicago suburbs told msnbc.com that his goal is a "non-violent intellectual revolution, which results in a full restoration of the federal Constitution."

    Online videos produced by Franchi, and online interviews with him, add specifics:

    • Franchi has supported the 9/11 Truth Movement, which supports the idea that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, werean inside job to create a pretext for a reduction in American liberty, or at least involved a cover-up, with the World Trade Center brought down by a planned U.S. demolition, instead of terrorist-controlled airplanes. Franchi founded the Lone Lantern Society (a reference to Paul Revere indicating that foreign enemies are on American soil). The group supports "the birth of freedom and the death of the New World Order," a secretive elite that is supposedly trying to set up a world government. Lone Lantern has held street demonstrations on the 11th of every month in Chicago and elsewhere, demanding an investigation of 9/11. In New Hampshire in 2008, a video shows Franchi asking Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security, who was campaigning for Sen. John McCain, whether Ridge would support an investigation of the "controlled demolition" of the World Trade Center. Ridge was having none of it, saying, "I just don't buy into that. That's a conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact. It's almost out of the Twilight Zone."
    • According to a 2010 reportby the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks domestic fringe groups, "Gary Franchi is one of the leading promoters of a resurgent Patriot conspiracy theory that alleges the government is creating concentration camps for U.S. citizens." In 2009 he co-wrote and co-produced the video "Camp FEMA: American Lockdown," which claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is creating concentration camps on air bases and in vacant buildings to house political dissenters when the federal government proclaims martial law. "Your church may have already signed a deal with the devil," reads promotional material for the film. The film questions whether Census data will be used to round up Americans. Clips from Franchi's film on YouTube show Hitler youth marching while the narrator ominously describes President Obama's plans to expand AmeriCorps and the USA Freedom Corps, the volunteer initiative launched by the Bush administration after 9/11.
    • Franchi operates Restore the Republic, which opposes the Federal Reserve, the IRS and the income tax, decries the control of the economy by the Rockefellers and the "banking cartel," and warns of government plans to plant RFID microchips into all Americans. The group was founded by Franchi and filmmaker and Libertarian presidential candidate Aaron Russo, and has been operated by Franchi since Russo's death from cancer in 2007. RTR shares an address with Revolution PAC in Northbrook, Ill. The group, which describes itself as a social media platform for like-minded individuals, promotes Russo's film, "America: Freedom to Fascism," in which Ron Paul declares, "If that's the definition of a police state — that you can't do anything unless the government gives you permission —we're well on our way." In a YouTube video interview with Franchi in 2008, Paul credited the Russo video with bringing a lot of people to his presidential campaign. The group has also placed billboards fueling the bogus claim that Obama is not an American citizen, asking, "Where's the REAL birth certificate?"
    YouTube

    Gary Franchi's film "Camp FEMA: American Lockdown" shows Hitler youth marching while the narrator ominously describes President Obama's plans to expand AmeriCorps and the USA Freedom Corps, the volunteer initiative launched by the Bush administration after 9/11.

    Franchi has been a frequent guest of Texas talk show host Alex Jones, who warns about the New World Order on his infowars.com and other websites. In a videotaped interview with Jones, Franchi explained that at 17 he began to read about "the committee of 300, the Club of Rome, the Council of Foreign Relations," and other groups of the New World Order.

    He said his parents, thinking he was mentally ill, had him heavily medicated for 10 years. But he continued his reading, particularly about the implantation of RFID microchips by government, and formed the Lone Lantern Society to tell people that "the enemies are here."

    "It's the truth, it's the message, that's piercing the darkness," Franchi told Jones. "Anything that's done in darkness, anything that is hidden in secret will be revealed. It's having an impact. People are waking up by the millions, Alex, by the millions! The New World Order does not stand a chance."

    'Derogatory'
    Franchi agreed to answer questions from msnbc.com, but only by email.

    He said labels are distracting, and the description of him by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "conspiracy theorist" is "derogatory and inflammatory language."

    In regard to Sept. 11, he said his view is that "I personally, alongside Russo, 9/11 Family members, and thousands of architects and engineers do advocate for a more thorough investigation, preferably free from the Executive Privilege invoked during the Bush Administration."

    Of Paul, Franchi said, "Ron Paul is my candidate because he understands what is affecting this nation, i.e. the Federal Reserve, an unsustainable foreign policy, and the loss of civil liberties under the guise of security."

    Orlin Wagner / AP

    Ron Paul has credited Franchi for bringing in more supporters for his presidential campaign.

    Paul has had a vague and uncertain connection with fringe views and conspiracy peddlers for decades. In several cases he has welcomed their support, neither repudiating their views nor explicitly endorsing them.

    For example, in 2007 Paul was asked by a student and 9/11 skeptic, "We've heard that you have questioned the government's official account." Paul replied, "Well, I never automatically trust anything the government does when they do an investigation because too often I think there’s an area that the government covered up, whether it’s the Kennedy assassination or whatever."

    When asked if that meant that he wanted an additional investigation, he added, "I think we have to keep pushing for it. And like you and others, we see the investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on."

    The year-end accounting to the FEC by Revolution PAC shows that it brought in $518,201 during the second half of 2011, since its founding last summer, and spent $434,432 supporting Paul, with $83,770 in cash on hand at the end of the year.

    These amounts are small compared with the official Paul campaign, which raised $26 million (second to Romney among Republican candidates) by year end, and another pro-Paul Super PAC, Endorse Liberty, which spent $3.3 million. A third pro-Paul Super Pac, Santa Rita, spent $320,000.

    Larger donors to the Revolution PAC include Texas rancher Margaret Bowman, who gave $50,000; and Scott Banister, an early investor in PayPal, who gave $10,000. Another $10,000 came from Judy Kay Gray, of Buffalo Grove, Ill., who paid $2.5 million to settle a false advertising claim by the Federal Trade Commission in 2008 regarding her company, North American Herb and Spice, and its claims that its oregano oil treated cold and flu.

    Large donors received a free book signed by Thomas Woods, an author and member of the Revolution PAC advisory board. Woods is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Mises is one of the members of the Austrian School of Economics, whose ideas have influenced Paul, such as his call for a return to a gold standard. The PAC paid Woods $1,200 to sign his books for donors.

    Gary Franchi on his webcast Reality Report.

    The Revolution PAC paid $41,487 to Franchi or his group Restore the Republic, including $3,000 a month in management fees, $1,766 a month in rent at their shared office in Northbrook, Ill., and a 10 percent commission on large financial donations solicited. Franchi, the group's chairman and treasurer, said in response to questions that these are reasonable charges, much lower than is common, and that he has provided more support to the PAC than it has paid to him, considering the value of his in-kind donations of his time and services.

    "I am personally not a representative for Dr. Paul nor should my beliefs be construed to be his," Franchi told msnbc.com. "Nor am I sure if Ron Paul believes in all the issues that concern me, however I do know I stand with him on the constitutional issues he continues to highlight throughout this election cycle and as he has done for over 20 years. That is why I formed Revolution PAC and produce content that I feel highlight his principled consistency and advocacy of fidelity to the Constitution."

    ---

    Should Ron Paul accept support from Revolution PAC? Post your comment below.

    Earlier coverage of the Super PAC financial reports:

    Obama bundler to 'de-register' as lobbyist

    Influence game: big donors and what they want

    NBC video: Million-dollar donors fuel Super PACs

    After TV cameras leave, Romney PAC discloses $18 million

    Casino magnate Adelson's family gave early money to Gingrich PAC

    Spielberg, labor union are big backers of Obama Super PAC

    Perry PAC's $1 million donor got help with nuclear waste dump

    Major GOP Super PAC raised $51 million in 2011

    Not 'Desperate' for cash: Obama lists his big fundraisers

    Sugar Daddy: Huntsman's father gave $1.9 million to Super PAC

    Colbert Super PAC raises $1 million; non-satirical PACs to follow

  • Maybe it's finally time to read those Ron Paul newsletters

    Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

    Paul has said that he didn't write part of the bigoted newsletters sent out under his name, but he hasn't said which parts, or who wrote them.

    By Bill Dedman
    Investigative Reporter, NBC News

    Ron Paul's history of publishing racist, homophobic and conspiratorial newsletters didn't seem to hurt him in the Iowa caucuses, where he surged from the back of the polls to finish in the top three among Republican candidates for president.

    Have you read the Paul newsletters? The singer Kelly Clarkson hadn't read them until after she endorsed Paul and some of her fans on Twitter pointed them out to her. Perhaps that's one sign that that public awareness remains low even while some may consider the newsletters "old news."

    The largest news organizations arrived late on this story, mostly ignoring it when the newsletters were described in detail in 2008. The story was "rediscovered" around the Christmas holiday as Paul rose in the Iowa opinion polls.

    Slate reporter Dave Weigel, who has covered the story for years, summarized this phenomenon derisively as "Ron Paul and extremism: Discover it again, for the first time."

    Below are links to the available newsletters and the main coverage, principally in the libertarian magazine Reason, the liberal magazine The New Republic, and Slate. Others have chimed in recently, but these are the essential reading if you want to know what's in the newsletters and how the story has developed.

    A few questions for discussion: Have you taken the time to read the newsletter issues that are available? Do they affect your views of Paul? If you're a Paul supporter, how do you factor them into your thinking? Is it sufficient to say, I disavow the parts that you don't like, without explaining why they were sent out under his name, which parts he wrote, and who wrote the rest?

    Add your comment below.

    Stories by Jamie Kirchick
    Jamie Kirchick has led the coverage. Although some of the newsletters had been quoted previously by a Democratic congressional candidate opposing Paul in Texas, he tracked down nearly a full set in archives of extremist literature at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Not all of those have been published still. Here are links to his coverage, from oldest to newest:

    Angry White Man: The bigoted past of Ron Paul, James Kirchick, The New Republic, Jan. 8, 2008

    "Whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him--and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics."

    Copies of the Ron Paul newsletters, via The New Republic, Jan. 8, 2008

    Selections from Ron Paul newsletters, The New Republic, Jan. 8, 2008

    More selections from Ron Paul newsletters, The New Republic, Jan. 14, 2008

    A collection of Ron Paul's most incendiary newsletters, The New Republic, Dec. 23, 2011

    Examples:

    A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.

    The June 1990 issue of the Political Report says: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”

    In an undated solicitation letter for The Ron Paul Investment Letter and the Ron Paul Political Report, Paul writes: "I've been told not to talk, but these stooges don't scare me. Threats or no threats, I've laid bare the coming race war in our big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS (my training as a physician helps me see through this one.) The Bohemian Grove--perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress's Mr. New Money. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica."

    Why don't Libertarians care about Paul's bigoted newsletters?, James Kirchick, The New Republic, Dec. 22, 2011

    It’s not simply that Paul’s supporters are ignoring the manifest evidence of his moral failings. More fundamentally, their very awareness of such failings is crowded out by the atmosphere of outright fervor that pervades Paul’s candidacy. This is not the fervor of a healthy body politic—this is a less savory type of political devotion, one that escapes the bounds of sober reasoning. Indeed, Paul’s absolutist notion of libertarian rigor has always been coupled with an attraction to fantasies of political apocalypse.

    The company Ron Paul keeps, James Kirchick, The Weekly Standard, Dec. 26, 2011

    This sordid history would not bear repeating but for the fact that the media love to portray Paul as a truth-telling, antiwar Republican standing up to the “hawkish” conservative establishment. Otherwise, the newsletters, and Paul’s continued failure to name their author, would be mentioned in every story about him, and he would be relegated to the fringe where he belongs. But Paul has escaped the sort of media scrutiny that would bury other political figures

    Ron Paul's world, James Kirchick, op-ed piece, The New York Times, Dec. 29, 2011

    Of course, it is impossible to know what Ron Paul truly thinks about black or gay people or the other groups so viciously disparaged in his newsletters. What we do know with absolute certainty, however, is that Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who regularly imputes the worst possible motives to the very government he wants to lead.

    Stories by Dave Weigel
    Dave Weigel has advanced the story repeatedly, first in the libertarian magazine Reason in 2008, and then in articles on Slate.

    Who wrote Ron Paul's newsletters?, Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, Reason.com, Jan. 16, 2008

    The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes.

    What if he wins? Imagining a Ron Paul victory in Iowa, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 19, 2011

    If Paul wins Iowa, that stops. The conservative press, which has been bored but hostile to Paul all year (just see the National Review’s cover story), will remind its readers that Paul wants to legalize prostitution and narcotics, end aid to Israel (as part of a general no-aid-for-anyone policy), and end unconstitutional programs like Medicare and social security. The liberal press will discover that he’s a John Birch Society supporter who for years published lucrative newsletters studded with racist gunk. In 2008, when the media didn’t take him seriously, Paul was able to get past the newsletter story with a soft-gummed Wolf Blitzer interview. (“Certainly didn't sound like the Ron Paul that I've come to know and our viewers have come to know all this time,” said Blitzer.) This was when Paul was on track to lose every primary. It’ll be different if the man wins Iowa.

    The secret origin of Ron Paul's newsletters, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 20, 2011

    The political press has rediscovered Ron Paul's wilderness years as a former congressman selling investment and political newsletters. (Classic NYT hed: "Bias in Ron Paul's Newsletters Draws New Attention." From you, guys!) No one has dug for anything new since James Kirchick first investigated the old newsletters, pulling gems -- ostensibly written by Paul -- along the lines of "if you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be," and "opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions." Instead, we're getting some low-heat follow up stories. Calls to Paul's campaign are not returned.

    Ron Paul is done talking about the newsletters, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 21, 2011

    Video of Paul ending a CNN interview when asked about the newsletters.

    Ron Paul is blowing it on the newsletter story, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 22, 2011

    News flash: The media doesn't just want to run fun pieces about how great your best ideas are. No one, in any kind of public life, could get away with publishing content under his own name then saying he had no idea who wrote it. He obviously has some idea. Will he have to admit that he's still friends with the people who wrote it? Will he have a story about how he ostracized those people? Either one of those admissions would answer the questions.

    Ron Paul on the Trilateral Commission, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 23, 2011

    Video from a C-SPAN interview with Ron Paul, when he responds to a caller's question about the Trilateral Commission, riffing on the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the Rockefeller trilateralists and the oil companies.

    Fifteen years ago, Ron Paul wasn't claiming somebody else wrote his newsletters, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 26, 2011

    Videos of Paul discussing the newsletter business in 1995.

    Ron Paul: I wrote parts of the newsletters, just not those parts, Dave Weigel, Slate, Dec. 29, 2011

    This is the most detail Paul's ever provided about the composition of the newsletters. He benefits from the format, and a host not very interested in following up; he savvily argues that the only offensive pieces of the newsletters were the ones that TV hosts et al keep talking about. The less-discussed survivalist talk? He doesn't back off that at all. And he doesn't say who's to blame for any of it, if not him.

    Major papers
    Larger news organizations recently started to cover the newsletter story as Paul has risen in the polls. One example:

    Paul disowns extremists' veiws but doesn't disavow the support, Jim Rutenberg and Serge F. Kovaleski, The New York Times, Dec. 26, 2011

    Mr. Paul’s calls for the end of the Federal Reserve system, a cessation of aid to Israel and all other nations and an overall diminishment of government power have natural appeal among far-right, niche political groups. Aides say that much of the support is unsolicited and that it is unfair to overlook the larger number of mainstream voters now backing him.

    But a look at the trajectory of Mr. Paul’s career shows that he and his closest political allies either wittingly or unwittingly courted disaffected white voters with extreme views as they sought to forge a movement from the nether region of American politics, where the far right and the far left sometimes converge.

    Your thoughts? What role do Paul's newsletters play in the way you view him? Have you read the newsletters? What do you think?